The majority of the Australian Taxation Office's workforce may be women, but a greater percentage of its senior executives and middle managers are men.
That was the finding of federal parliament's tax and revenue committee, which this week tabled its second report into the 2014 ATO annual report.
The Tax Office, like many other public and private sector organisations, has not set specific gender-based targets, although it does have a diversity and inclusion strategy to address the imbalance.
Almost 60 per cent of the ATO's workforce is female. But at the top management levels, men far outnumber women.
Figures provided by ATO to the committee show that as of June 30, 2014, at the top executive level (senior executive service 2), there were twice as many full-time employed men as women (20 men compared with 10 women).
At the senior executive service 1 level there were 128 men, compared with 65 women. At the Executive Level 2 there were 981 males compared with 620 females. And at the Executive Level 1 there were 2065 men compared with 1579 women.
When it comes to graduates employed over the year to June 30 2014, there were 151 males graduates, compared with 84 female graduates.
Women's executive and middle manager numbers significantly improve when looking at part-time work, where women significantly outnumber men at all management levels.
Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan told the Committee the ATO's flexible work hours were also beneficial for dealing with peaks in workloads around tax time - from July to October each year.
Senior ranks' imbalance
ATO People deputy commissioner Jacqui Curtis told the parliamentary committee that "we, like many other organisations, still do have a slight imbalance in the senior ranks", but the ATO was "faring pretty well compared with other agencies".
This year the Australian Institute of Company Directors set a voluntary target for 30 per cent of board seats to be filled by women by the end of 2018.
Workplace Gender Equality Agency data shows that last year only 18.8 per cent of the ASX 200 organisations that report to the agency had set a gender target for their boards.
While the ATO has not set specific targets to boost the number of women, Ms Curtis said the agency was using various measures to improve the gender balance within the senior levels of its workforce.
These included learning and development programs to give women more confidence to apply for positions in senior roles, flexible working arrangements, including part-time work, and job sharing.
An ATO spokesman told Fairfax Media its strategies to boost the presence of women at the top were gradually resulting in change. "There are three women advisors on the ATO executive, the senior ATO committee," he said.
"The ATO has demonstrated significant improvements in recent years with the proportion of females at senior executive levels in the ATO increasing from 21 per cent in 2001, 27 per cent in 2006, 35 per cent in 2012 and the current figure of 37 per cent."
He said the ATO's biggest graduate stream - the tax technical capability (which makes up about 70 per cent of graduate intake) - has recruited 51 per cent female graduates this year.
The spokesman said the ATO could "still do more to make better use the skills and strengths of women and remove any barriers to this to ensure women are well represented at all levels of the organisation".
The committee said in its report it was "satisfied that the ATO is committed to maintaining and improving its gender diversity".
